


Binoculars

by baconbits1760



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Battle of Crait, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Force-Sensitive Poe Dameron, Gay Poe Dameron, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Language, Pining, Poe Dameron Is A Mess, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22216435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baconbits1760/pseuds/baconbits1760
Summary: In hindsight, using the binoculars may have been a mistake.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 19
Kudos: 111





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This was supposed to be a one shot about if Poe had seen Rose kiss Finn. Instead it most likely will be well over 3 chapters of gay pining and I will not apologize for this.

In hindsight, using the binoculars _may_ have been a mistake.

He wasn't entirely sure when they were handed to him, he can recall a hazy murmur of "Dameron, here-" and the feeling of a metallic, rusty apparatus being shoved into his hands as the rest of the Resistance fighters rushed back into the cave. His skin was far too warm against the cold wind that blew at him from just beyond the barricade. The red salt had already painted a pattern onto his face and neck as he desperately watched, waited. The color was fitting, as he could feel the inevitable burning anxiety wrap it's magma fingers around his throat. 

Finn was out there. Disobeying a direct order from him and flying himself directly into the line of fire...on a battering cannon.There were gasps and screams and Finn was out there risking his life without backup. Without _him._

He had told everyone to peel off, to get back to the trench, and somehow this cocky ex-stormtrooper had found the audacity to blatantly disregard his life to complete the suicide mission he had willingly began. 

The trench was just high enough that he had to lift himself upwards to see anything beyond 12 feet ahead of him. His hands were beginning to shake as he poured over the entire horizon.

"Come on- come on Finn." 

It feels like hours before he sees it- the sand skimmer closest to the cannon. For a second he drops the binoculars to his chest and turns his head to the side, his stomach trying to empty itself onto the crystal-like red floor of the trench. After a few shaky gasps, he convinces himself to just _look_ at the wreckage. 

A destroyed cockpit lay facing towards him, the charred and torn seat- empty? 

Poe's mind races, scanning the entire wreckage trying to find him. 

_God he's out there dead, snapped his neck on impact or severed his spinal cord when he was thrown from the cockpit or-_

His entire body shakes so violently that he cuts the bridge of his nose against the rim of the eye-piece.

He can't seem to relieve the tension growing in his stomach, as the knot he had formed more than a month ago seems to grow too heavy. His knees lose their strength and he has to quickly smack his hand to the lip of the wall to hold himself steady.

The wind howled, or was it his blood rushing in his ears. God everything was so loud, and he could barely keep the damned thing steady enough to see. It wasn't calibrated right, sharp black crescents waned across the corners of the image. He could just barely see the faint triangled tips of his own eyelashes pressed against the glass. 

"Come on Finn- come on _please-"_ His voice cracks as he can feel himself reaching his limit.

For a moment everything swims, he can feel his stomach trying to leave though his throat again. 

"I cant- he _can't_ do this. Come on Finn!" He's shouting into the void at this point but anything to calm his sparked nerves is helpful.

A droplet of blood rolls down the side of his nose and slips into the space between his lips. 

Finn came racing across his vision so fast that he almost completely missed him. 

"Oh thank god-" Poe really was thanking whatever powers made this man not dead because- his throat tightened to even think about what he would have done if Finn hadn't made it. 

He watched in confusion as Finn dived face-first back into the rubble, wiping his burned and bloody hands on his black cargo pants.

The steaming, freshly crashed cock-pit's door was ripped open upon impact. The pilot pulled out by Finn's strong hands. Poe squinted, trying to make sense of the adrenaline addled events that transpired before him. 

The person in the cockpit was leaning forward-

"Rose." Poe pulls away from the binoculars again. It finally clicks, the position of the sand-skimmers, the damage. She had hit him to save him, to keep him out of the line of fire. 

Grateful isn't the perfect summary of what was crossing his face, it probably looked more similar to a mixture of pain and relief.

Something suddenly feels off, his chest aches and his stomach drops so fast he can barely steady himself. 

He yanks the eye piece back up to his face, watching intently as Finn yells at her. She must be speaking because suddenly his face drops and he leans forward to listen, like a puppy hearing a command.

The wind blows so hard that he's blinking back tears. A particularly strong gust sends him careening into the stoney wall. He grapples with the binoculars again and finds the spot in the distance with less difficulty this time.

And then he sees it.

He's managed to only snag the end bit of it, but clear as day it's happening.

Finn's kissing Rose. 

He blinks. He can't do this. 

If adrenaline was driving him before, shock is now. He drops the binoculars, the sound of them clattering to the ground muffled by the Tie Fighters still hovering in the upper stratosphere. 

He turns on his heel and heads towards the juncture of the cave and the trench. 

But something stops him, some loud nagging voice in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like General Organa seemed to demand for him to halt. 

To turn around and ensure that Finn and Rose had made it back to safety. 

And for a small moment, nothing mattered more than checking for him.

He stumbles slightly on the uneven surface of the trench right before the wall, raking his palms against the salt. The pilot lets out a hiss comparable to the doors of the evac-ship and tries to rub the salt crystals out before they begin to burn to their full effect. 

Every part of him felt strange. He could see himself acting out motions but couldn't remember making the decision to perform them in the first place.

He was suddenly hoisting himself up and over the lip of the trench, his hands throbbing in time with his newly amplified heartbeat. 

Nothing he was doing made sense. It was as if he was just watching from the sidelines. 

Suddenly he was dodging to the left, ducking as large chunks of salt flew in every direction. "Shit-" 

The Tie Fighters. Another green laser beam smacked onto the surface, this time only a few yards away. Poe managed to roll out of the way as a brick of salt the size of his head tried to knock him down for good.

_Why am I still here? I should be back in the base, helping the others-_

His thoughts are interrupted by that same nagging voice again, some part of him feels the comforting tone of a mother he's never met. 

"Save Finn first, then you can help the others." 

For a moment his steps fell with a regained urgency. But as his body pressed forward, his mind can't help but flood with thoughts. He tries to fight it, that presence he can feel occupying some crevice in the deep, distant part of his consciousness. 

“Poe stop fighting me.” The voice sounds so familiar that the instant they speak he relaxes. The throbbing in the back of his head ceases immediately, and he sighs in relief. 

The salt in the wind begins to burn as it slices small, almost invisible cuts on his neck and face. 

His eyes sink slightly. 

_He was kissing her._

It just repeats, the image as clear as he had just seen it. Her hand on his face, Finn’s holding her other so gently. He shuts his eyes in a desperate plea to keep himself sane. But the image is still there, and he has to grit his teeth to keep from sobbing. 

Finn is only another 200 yards away. 

He has Rose in his arms, and Poe feels like yelling. Tears form small rivers of clear skin down his now red-speckled face. He brings a worn jacket sleeve up to his face, scrubbing at his cheeks angrily. 

_I don't want to feel like this._

Something in the way the voice speaks tells him that they are smiling. A mournful tone that makes his heart hurt. 

"I know."

He loses his footing for a moment and scrambles to catch himself, his jacket sleeve ripping in the process. Normally ruining a jacket like this would send him into hysterics for a day or two but nothing could distract him from the conversation he was having with the air. 

_I want it to stop._

His breathing gets shaky, coming out in unpatterned gasps. He can't tell if it's from fear or from running or from something else entirely, but his chest is so tight he can barely suck in air. The burning sensation under his bottom eyelids signalling to the presence that the salt wasn't the only thing making him tear up. 

"Please just-" he bites back a sob as he says it aloud. He's nearly there, just another 20 yards. 

His left leg is screaming at him and his chest burns. 

"Make it stop, _please._ "

"I'm sorry Poe. This feeling...it doesn't ever stop. It just manifests in different places." 

Finn is holding Rose in his arms, stumbling back towards the base too slowly. When he sees Poe, his face lights up and the pilot feels his throat tighten.

"Come on! We gotta get out of here!" Poe shouts over the harsh wind. He's shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, pointing the other back towards the decrepit base.

Finn nods, squinting in the bright sun. He readjusts Rose on his shoulder, who is quite obviously unconscious and injured. He winces as her abdomen puts pressure on his arm, which by the looks of it, is sprained. Although it may be a broken collarbone. 

Poe puts his hand on her back and yells again, "I'll take her, you're hurt!" The leather fabric of her jacket reminds him of his old one. The one he gave to him. The one he's looking at now, stretched across Finn's surprisingly strong arms. It had framed him so well that Poe had almost lost control when he first caught sight of him, after the adrenaline had died down enough to give way to a clear head. Finn has said something about giving it back but it was so blurred out that Poe had just panicked and told him to keep it. He remembers so vividly how fast his heart was pounding against his ribcage. 

Admittedly, his heart was racing faster now than he had ever felt it before. He's pivoted so they are side by side and leaned so her body could be easily transferred from shoulder to shoulder. 

He stumbled as soon as her full unconscious weight was on him, his left leg giving out in a dramatic protest. Finn lurches down, looping his hands around the other's waist to keep him upright. Poe ignores Finn's _woah_ and jerks himself out of his grasp. "I got it." 

It comes out a little more stern than he had planned it to, and the voice crack on the last word had not helped in the slightest. A hot wash of guilt burns its way up his neck and into his face. He turns away from Finn's look of bewilderment, praying for some magical strength to carry him through this.

They have 500 yards to cross with no cover and no sign of backup. 

From the lack of new ships in the atmosphere, Poe could tell that no one had answered their call. The rebellion was on their last leg. 

"We have to get out of here," Finn turns to him, his big, dumb, perfect eyes casting across the pilot for some answer to a question he had missed. "Are you alright to walk?" 

His embarrassment quickly turned to anger. It took everything in him not to scream at the poor guy. 

Not only had he just woken up from a coma, but he was thrust back into the insane world of a rebellion soldier within the hour. He didn’t deserve Poe’s worst just because he was jealous. 

"Of course I'm alright to walk!" Poe curses whatever piss-poor mood he had found in the trash today. His leg had taken some serious damage when his ship had crashed just minutes before Finn had refused to follow orders. He hadn't even bothered to look at it, he had just succumb to the fear and let it carry him. 

He nodded to himself, throwing Rose up higher on his back, using his right hand to wrap her arms around his neck. His leg screamed, and he couldn't stop the pained grunt that left him as he took his first step. 

Finn, from the corner of his vision, was wearily wiping blood off his left temple. He hadn't used his right arm since Poe had seen him lift Rose off her feet.

400 yards left. 

They were now almost running. Poe had shouted for the other to just keep going. The storm trooper had ignored Dameron's _stop waiting up for me!_ And remained loyally by his side. 

_I hate him._

"No you don't."

The voice scared him so badly that his arms tensed, almost locking up in their position. His leg and arms ached in protest. 

Unfortunately he had completely forgotten about this voice. His whole body felt hot as a wave of embarrassment soaked into his skin. 

There was no line of protection in his mind to keep him under the radar. In the outside world, the physical one, all he had to do was find some pretty girl and let her take the reigns. As long as she was happy and he was comfortably safe inside the shell he had formed, he was satisfied. But Finn made everything so damn difficult. 

He had broken it off with the last girlfriend because the Resistance was a good enough excuse to stop dating altogether. It had been relatively mutual but there were a few moments of bitterness between them in the months that followed. And there he stayed, in this limbo of being too busy and too close to the line of fire to want to put anyone through heartbreak again. 

And then he was captured by the First Order. It wasn't exactly convenient and he wasn't really banking on making it out of there alive, but at least he was doing something important.

And then a stormtrooper took off his helmet and his world just collapsed. _Of course_ the bad guys were hot, _of course_ he couldn’t get lucky enough to have ugly unfeeling captors. But then, the first time he had looked into this gunner’s eyes, something in him had told him that this soldier was _good._ That he was special, and he needed to get him out of here as soon as he could. 

He was lucky enough to usually be alone in his head. And now he had a visitor and no clean space for them to sit. 

They could see every strong thought that crossed his mind and he hadn’t had a weak one all day. A shiver ran through him. 

Some form of fear or anticipation cycled its way through his nerves. 

Something big was coming. 

He could hear it, not too far away. The click of a button, the movement of a gunner’s joystick. 

“Finn! Get down!” It hits 5 feet from Poe’s right side. A flash of green and suddenly he’s sent flying to the left. His left elbow collides with Finn’s chest as they make contact and Rose is luckily caught between them. 

Poe manages to roll over slightly, which felt impossible under the weight of both Rose and Finn. He lets out a groan as he feels something hitting him. He hasn’t managed to pry his eyes open yet, the dust and smoke still kicking his protective instincts into overdrive. Something hits him again, this time more urgently. 

Finn’s voice comes drifting into his ears faintly. He’s saying something important but he can’t seem to grasp it. 

Finally he feels something on top of him. Heavy and sharp, pinning him to the rocky surface beneath him. A hard slap to the face gets him sober fast. 

His hand flies to his cheek as his eyes snap open. “The hell Finn?!” He manages to mumble, staring at the man on top of him. His face is covered in red dust and he seems to be breathing heavy. “Get up!” Finn screams. It’s so loud that its overwhelming. He hears them as soon as Finn yells, his hearing seemingly back online. Tie fighters. More than he’s heard from the outside of a ship in a while. 

One is too close. Some instinct kicking into gear as he hears the telltale signs of one swooping low. He yanks Finn down just in time as sure enough, one sweeps itself just above the ground. He presses Finn to the ground as he realizes the ship has stopped moving. Finn lets out a muffled protest, but Poe isn’t listening. He slams the other’s head into his chest and rolls himself so he’s fully on top of him, his legs on either side of the other’s waist. Normally, straddling Finn would have been something he could have only dreamed of, but in the heat of the moment he barely even realized what he was doing. He lifts his head to the front of the ship, using his left elbow to cover Finn, putting a barrier between the inevitable blast and the storm trooper. The poor guy lets out a grunt as the pilot sets the entirety of his weight on his stomach.

For a long second Poe stares into the black glass covering the cockpit. His reflection looks rather rough, red and splotchy. A large swath of particularly large bruises on his jaw make him wince. His breathing is heavy and slightly labored with the larger man’s weight on his chest. The heartbeat in his ears is suddenly so quiet that he’s worried he died in the blast, that these are all the visions of a dead man. 

He hears it again. 

The shift of a gunner’s joystick, and the click of a button. 

The green flashes bright. His heartbeat is so slow that it feels like seconds before he hears it again. There’s a low humming noise in the back of his head, the presence he felt earlier watching helplessly. 

It starts in his chest, a swelling feeling. Like a tensing of muscles that he didn’t know he even possessed. His throat tightens. 

Although the presence is still there, the lifting of his arm is done of his own volition. 

An instinct drives him to it. 

The wind rushes past him, his hand shaking. 

He shuts his eyes so tight that they throb, fearing the darkness that follows what those lasers will do to two shieldless people. 

But then nothing happens. He blinks them open as he feels a resistance against his hand. A pressure with no physical sensation. 

The beam has stopped halfway between Poe and the Tie fighter. Standing still in mid-air like some sort of hover bike. The wind blows past him, sanding him in red salt. The pressure beyond his hand steadily increases. The beam shifts and wobbles slightly, its forward motion stopped dead in its tracks. 

Poe sputters out a laugh, relief and surprise folding themselves into delight at the fact that they were both still alive. Tears pierce through the bottom lid and spring over the edge of his eyes, falling down his face as he openly cries. 

They made it. The trench is less than 250 yards away and they are saved. _Finn_ was saved.

The pressure blooms harsher against his hand, the bones in his arm wailing. His smile quickly falters.

He grits his teeth slightly and tries to press against it, letting the effort and relief coast him through. The tie fighter remains motionless, the person inside seemingly frozen in place along with their attack. 

The blood rushes hard against his eardrums, every muscle in his arm screams now. Every instinct tells him to bow out, to let this beam just strike him down and give him some relief. Everything is so quiet and loud at the same time. 

There are shouts from people that he’s never heard before, the sound of screams and laughter, of waves and thunder from places so far off that he’ll never see. Sounds of the jungles and deserts, of songs so beautiful that his soul mourns for the people who will never hear them. 

He stretches his fingers out more, hoping to get a better grasp on whatever power he’s borrowing. Instead a shooting pain coasts from his elbow down. The strained tendons shaking heavily as he uses every ounce of strength he can find. 

Closing his eyes again, he reaches beyond those sounds and screams. Crying out for someone to give him the support he needs. Instead he sees the dark, cold waves of a place he can feel deep below him. A place full of something too wrathful to sink his toes into. It calls to him, trying to wrap its hands around him and drag him deeper. Instead he screams again, launching himself away from that energy entirely. 

The pressure is pressing so harshly that his wrist begins to throb. He opens his eyes and watches as the beam begins to move again, following its course towards them. 

“Poe?” Finn asks cautiously, trapped below the pilot’s body. He watches in a mixture of fear and awe as the pilot lets out an anguished scream. 

The jacket sleeve on his arm tears away, and the flesh beneath is an angry red. The blood begins to pool beneath the surface of the skin, bringing an almost blue hue to his wrist and palm. 

Poe is clenching his teeth together, sucking in loud, nearly useless breaths. His eyes begin to burn from the wind but he fears if he closes them again, the beam will surely kill them. The presence in his mind is gone, leaving him utterly alone in this fight.

His hand is shaking so roughly that the beam is beginning its descent faster. He can feel whatever power, whatever strength he temporarily possessed was beginning to fade. He bites back a sob as the pressure shoots a newfound pain up to his shoulder. 

It takes every last ounce of his strength to wave his hand to the side.

The beam is suddenly back to full speed but deflected to the left, slamming to the ground a few yards to the left. He slumps to the side, smacking the back of his head into the craggy stone. The tie fighter, not unlike Poe, slams heavily into the ground, it's wings shattering upon impact. A piece of metal comes clattering to a halt next to his boots. He sighs and closes his eyes, breathing in and letting the feeling of the air sweeping through his lungs relax him. 

Finn wraps his arm around Poe’s neck and breathes in shakily. A tired smile plays at the pilot’s features as he reaches up with his left hand and pats the other’s back. 

He lets his leg slip off of Finn and feels the storm trooper roll out from under him. His large hands are helping him up, urging him gently to move upward and towards the trench. Finn is lifting Rose up onto his good shoulder with a loud grunt. 

He feels horrible. His his right arm is entirely numb and his leg won’t keep steady for the life of him. He’s literally on his last leg. 

They don’t get more than 50 feet before they hear the door to the cockpit swing open.

Poe turns around so fast that his knee nearly dislocates then and there. 

Anger boils against the inside of his head as the silver-toting storm trooper cocks the blaster in their hands. Panic overtakes his fury as he realizes he can’t stop this threat like the last. 

He’s used everything he had to keep them from being killed one way just for the next way to pop up undetected. He holds out his arm to keep Finn behind him, the other trying to press through. 

He ignores the other’s _Just let me take this guy down-_ and takes a quick moment to glance around. The only shelter was the trench behind them, and they were still a good 150 yards away. It would take a miracle to get them there before this gunner took them both down. 

Every heartbeat made his arm and leg ache. The gunner lifted their blaster and took aim, Poe’s heart leaped into his throat. 

“Go.” 

Finn looked at him, shock rolling over his pretty face. “No!” It’s almost a shout, his voice raising an octave or two. 

“Finn. Run-now!” He shouts as the storm trooper begins to fire. Poe pushes the other back using his good arm. The action seems to kickstart him because suddenly he’s sprinting as fast as he can with Rose over his shoulder towards the edge of the trench. Nirvana was just beyond those walls and all he had to do was keep Finn and Rose safe. The blaster fires, a shot hitting just a few feet from Finn. 

Poe forces his aching muscles to comply for what will undoubtedly be his last act. Leaning back on his heel for just a moment, he launches himself at full speed towards the gunner. Letting the momentum carry him as far as it could before he took another step. Finn yelps as a blast hits the dirt right behind him. 

“Hey!” Poe yells. The storm trooper takes their aim off Finn and redirects the blasts towards him. He’s already almost upon the gunner when they fire a shot that hits his bad shoulder. It nearly stops him in his tracks. A cry of pain escapes his lips before he can stop it. The blaster cocks again. He throws his good hand out in some desperate attempt to stop them. His knees hit the ground as the pain overwhelms him, nothing in his body working with him anymore. 

The gunner takes aim. And for a moment, Poe finds a small second of peace. He turns back and sees that Finn is sliding down the trench now, Rose safely in his arms. A smile turns the corners of his mouth, and his heartbeat slows. The soft thump in his chest gives him some comfort, as his eyelids become heavy. 

The world slows down, giving him enough time to accept his fate. At least he’s safe. He’s done what he had to do to keep a Finn alive, which is more than he could have asked for.

His blinks are becoming harder to perform, and he finally gives in to the exhaustion. 

A blaster fires. 

There’s no pain. No burning sensation that typically follows a shot from a blaster. Just the wind weaving through his fingers. Another blaster fires, echoing against the quiet mountains. He hesitantly opens an eye, sweeping it across the terrain. 

The storm trooper is on the ground, a large maw-like hole gaping through their silver helmet. 

“Dameron! Get in here now!” A resistance gunner’s head peeks over the edge of the trench, their helmet gleaming brightly in the sun. 


	2. Chapter 2

Nobody seems to have noticed what he had done to the tie fighter. If they had, they weren’t coming to him to speak on it. 

There was a small group of people waiting on the other side of the tunnel. As their hands begin to weave cleaning supplies and bandages across his skin, his mind is drawn elsewhere. 

“Finn-“ His shot nerves spike for a moment, as he swivels his head around the room. “Where’s Finn?!” It’s a shout now. Somebody hushes him,  _ He’s safe. They’re both safe. _

“Hey! Hey- easy! Easy!” He can’t help but yelp as a person presses the cloth too roughly to his skin, the tender nerves screaming at the burning sensation that boils to the surface. There’s a small young woman with a soft round face and warm rosy cheeks that murmurs an apology to him as she reaches up to clean the blood off of his face. 

“You're bleeding an awful lot, love.” She looks down at his arm worriedly as she draws a gentle hand over the bruised surface. “What happened out there?” 

The memories flash quickly through his mind again. His chest feels so incredibly tight that he lets out a strangled gasp. Every sound is overwhelming him, the murmuring of the other wounded fighters, the clicking and whirring of the droids, its all too much. His heartbeat thumps in his veins and his arm hurts just so damn much. “Hey, hey relax, we aren’t done yet-“ He can’t hear her well enough to process what she says. He yanks his arm away from her much to his nerves’ chagrin. They howl and he instinctively clasps his hand down on the throbbing skin. Tucking his arm into his chest, he waits there, curled in a ball, for the pain to cease. 

But the throbbing and screaming of his flesh continues. Marching on to the beat of his own heart. 

“Captain Dameron?” 

He glances up from his crouching fetal position to see a young man in a torn and dirty pilot’s uniform, giving him the worried eyes he’s seen too many of today. He was seriously getting sick of that look. 

“Hah- yeah?” He can barely move. Even speaking makes his throat scrape, tears threatening to well up from the new pain. It feels like he’s swallowed metal scraps and let them rust in the space behind his jaws. The young pilot shifts awkwardly and scratches his nose, seemingly distracted by his superior being in such a state. Poe can feel his cheeks light aflame, breaking the eye contact to glance at his surroundings. 

He’s surrounded by other Resistance members, each of them with their eyes trained on him. There were those damned worry eyes again, gleaming in every single person there. Someone is standing particularly close to him, at his right, with her hand on his back. Rubbing small comforting circles into the dirty leather. It's an older woman he's known since he first joined. If his memory served correctly, she helped train the new recruits in hand-to-hand combat for defense. Their eyes meet and she gives him a small smile and reaches to ruffle his hair. He can’t help but let out a laugh, small and scoff-like but still a laugh nonetheless. 

“General Organa wishes to speak with you.” The young man glances down at him, an urgency falls on everyone else as another batch of fighters come stumbling through the tunnel. 

“Now.” The word hits him with a different feeling. A dreadful, nauseous feeling that wraps itself around his throat. There’s not a snowflake's chance on Jakku that this isn’t a scolding from the General. He knew he had waited too long to pull the troops out and the tie fighters had made their loss even worse. And now she was going to murder him on the spot. She’d have one of the pretty women in her inner circle commit the deed so the crowd didn’t tie it to her, but they’d still get a hell of a show to watch. 

“Captain Dameron?” He snaps back to reality, the poor kid is still waiting for him to respond. He casts a glance around, and realizes that  _ everyone _ is waiting for his response. His breathing is a little less shaky, but his voice comes out cracked and hoarse even without the added wheezing. “Uh yeah, sure.” He pauses for a moment and begins to straighten himself upright. His shoulder groans and his fingers feel like they are surely going to tumble to the floor at any minute, leaving him a fingerless, dead, pilot. “Can-“ He stops for a second, still about halfway from being completely upright, his voice cracking slightly as the embarrassment coats his throat. He can’t even get himself back into standing position, how far did he let himself get pushed today? 

“Can someone help me up?” 

With the question, feeble as it had sounded, comes several people clamoring to his side. There is a quick discussion among the group as to who is helping him. They finally settle on a pretty man with blonde hair and brown eyes. He has small wrinkles around the corners of his eyes and his hair has a few white streaks in it. It’s odd though, Poe isn’t sure if he’s middle aged or no older than 25. He shakes the thoughts off as the man murmurs a warning before putting his hand on the small of Poe’s back and the other on his stomach, effectively guiding him into a standing position. He bites back a groan as his back tweaks slightly from the strain, sending a fiery lash to his neck. Removing his hand leaves a cold space on Poe’s torso. He links a large well-muscled arm around Poe’s good arm, leaving the pilot to follow where the man leads. 

They round a few corners in the series of tunnels the old rebels had built. They are sizable, even as Poe glances down a spare few that look smaller and less man-made, he can’t help but gape at them. The ruby red shimmers in the electric lantern light, looking almost maroon the deeper they go. Suddenly there are more boxes of supplies than before, far outweighing the smattering of little resources that had been kicked to the side by the entrance to the trench. These are thick and well-padded, perfect for transport with several grips and handlebars in varying sizes along the edges. With more frequent supply crates comes more people. They race by the two men, some walking just slightly fast than them with more trailing behind, others locked in a dead sprint, sending gusts of air into Poe as they weave swiftly around him. There are several large groups of repairers working on old skimmers, trying to salvage parts or repair what they can to get them up and working. A large thruster suddenly sparks on and sends the poor pair of workers flying as it spins and rockets past them into the larger cavern beyond. There are a few shouts of surprise as people duck and dive out of the way. 

He feels a smile tug at his mouth. Normally that kind of moment would end in the rest of the crew laughing and making up some horrible nickname for the poor engineer. He’d known a few “Sparky”s and “Butter Fingers” in time here. But no one makes a move to smack the builder on the back of the neck, no murmured ‘nice going’s are heard. His stomach flips. 

They don’t have  _ time  _ to goof off, they were alone on a deserted planet with no back up. 

Every moment spent distracted was another person lost. 

His stomach clenches and he can feel the bile rising in his throat. His hands get shaky as he tries to fight off the vomit, his throat feels like it’s on fire. He closes his eyes and breathes in through his nose. 

He can hear his mother’s voice. “In for four.” Following her words as they echo against the inside of his head, the sounds of his childhood home warming his skin. “Hold for four.” His heart beats slower. He can feel the bright summer sun washing him in its glow from his head to his feet. His arm aches less now, although it still throws a sharp beat of protest at him. 

The man shifts his arm slightly, reminding him that he isn’t alone. It’s substantially less comfortable than Finn’s, and he struggles not to rip himself out of the other’s stiff grasp. He lets the breath go through his nose, slightly dissatisfied in his current company.

“Captain Dameron.”

He opens his heavy eyelids to glare at whoever was bothering him now. The warmth that had surrounded him left as swiftly as it had came. 

General Organa stands in front of him, her arms crossed against her chest.

The dread he had just managed to stifle bloomed again, racing a hot streak of anxiety up his chest and into his neck. His mind stumbling back to hysterics. 

He tries to physically slow his breathing down but his lungs are having none of it. 

His eyes flick down to the floor beneath him. 

“Captain I am very dissa-“ She suddenly falters. He flinches as she takes a step too quickly towards him and raises a hand. But there is no strike, no angry slap like he had expected. Instead, he watches as she draws her hand to his face. The bruises he had seen earlier are no doubt a deep purple now. She lets her hand hover above the skin, tracing them down his jawline and lightly pulls the edge of his shirt collar away. Poe’s entire face feels incredibly warm as a rather large set of onlookers gape at his injuries, at him. She is so focused that his nervous throat-clearing goes completely unanswered.

He can’t stop himself from looking away, distracting himself by people watching those that brisked past. The busy bustling reminded him of the medic bay back on the main ship. People rushing in and out with new injuries and visiting their friends and family, visiting their partners. 

Since Finn had arrived unconscious, he had spent an increasing amount of time in the area. Always hovering around, keeping watch or waiting for some good news. The medical officers had begun to register him as some sort of local there, as he spent more time there than some of their patients did.

It had become basic knowledge, much to his disdain, that if you needed Captain Dameron and could not find him, he was most likely sitting in the medic ward. And most likely asleep in a chair next to the deserter from the First Order with work papers or a ship part half-repaired in his hands. 

His heart ached to see other resistance fighters surrounded by family and friends. Finn had only him. He couldn’t stomach the thought that Finn would wake up without him there. But, the guy had never had a good sense of timing. 

That had been the second time Poe had fallen head over heels for him, naked and leaking water everywhere, in the middle of the ship bay. 

He is pulled away from this thought by a hand gripping his jaw and turning his head back to center. He winces slightly as the bruises General Organa was pressing into smarted. 

“I said, ‘what happened out there, Poe?’ Were you listening?” 

“No, I’m sorry General.” It comes out so meekly that Organa seems almost taken aback.

She glances quickly at the bruising again and a serious look brings her true age to her face. A bead of sweat drips down in nose, stinging the cut on his nose bridge, and he’s made painfully aware of just how gross he must look right now. His scalp is freezing with how soaked in sweat his hair is, and his entire face feels puffy and swollen. 

“I crashed. The impact ejected me from the skimmer and I hit the ground pretty hard.” Her mouth twitches. She glances at the officer to her right who had suddenly appeared next to her and waves them off. 

_ Liar _ . He can hear Finn saying it to him, angry and overstressed and tired.

“Take off the jacket, Poe.” It was not a suggestion. She’s looking at him intently, waiting for her subordinate to follow her command. 

“N-no?” It comes out as more of a question than a statement. He’s honestly not sure that he could take the damned thing off even if he wanted to. Her eyes widen and she screws her mouth tight. 

He can feel the back of his throat closing. Lying had never really been a great skill of his and he was sure she had seen right through his poor excuse of one. 

"I-" he pauses, trying to live down the voice crack he just had. Her eyes beam straight through him and he can't put into thoughts how much he dislikes it. 

"I honestly don't think I could even if I wanted to, ma'am." 

He can almost feel her heart drop, her hair raising with the gravity of his statement. 

"We need it off now-" Leia's words speed up as her fear pushes the thought out swiftly. "Sergeant Hitay- cut it off." 

"Woah, hey-" Hitay takes a fast step towards him and Poe instinctually moves back, holding up a finger on his good hand. "Either we do this now, or the medics do it with a scalpel on your corpse." Hitay says, softly as if coaxing a wild animal. 

"Poe." He turns to look at Organa, her face back to its typically stern appearance. "Sit." 

It's odd how easily he will be coerced. He's already beginning the motions to sit on the cold stone floor before he's even aware of it. Her voice is nearly a perfect match for the presence from before, especially with her last command. It quirks an odd part of his brain that agrees, gives him a logical reasoning as to why he must recognize her voice in his head. 

The Sergeant moves swiftly, making quick work of the shoulder of his jacket, seperating it cleanly from the sleeve. "Damn, I just got this one too." 

General Organa chuckles slightly, drawing a bewildered look out of the pilot. 

"Well, I was wondering how Finn managed to get his hands on a Resistance jacket so quickly after his initial arrival-" She smiles and gestures to him, "but this makes sense." 

He can  _ feel _ the blood rushing to his face. His fingers feel numb as his pride supercedes the need to heal or circulate apparently. He fights the urge to press his good hand over his face to keep some dignity, but if he moves too quickly he's losing an arm. 

As if on cue, the blade chops through the sleeve, following vertically from a slice at the top of his shoulder all the way through the cuff. "There's no getting  _ that _ back now." He mutters.

He looks disdainfully at the Sergeant as he moves to stand at Organa’s side.

For a moment he just watches as the General observes his arm, her face nearly unreadable. Their eyes meet for just a moment and he can feel himself growing nervous again. She looks so worried, sympathetic even, her hand coming to rest on her chest. 

Suddenly she turns to the Sergeant, “Go get a medic.” 

His shoulders drop and he opens his mouth to protest, but Organa beats him to it. “ Quickly!” He jumps slightly at the raise in volume and turns tail towards the medical station. Poe intently watches him leave, trying not to stare too directly at the man’s tight fitting pants or perfectly spaced shoulders. A cold wash of guilt covers his skin as he remembers where his is, who he’s in front of. He turns back to Organa and nearly keels over there on the floor. 

She’s within an inch of him kneeling on the ground, staring intently at him. Her brows are furrowed as she dissects him. His eyes flick between her and the people still watching. 

_ Well this couldn’t be more embarrassing. _

“Are you- should I-“ He stumbles over a few options in his head as to what he should say. 

“I’m not sure what we’re doing.” He says, intelligently. 

Her eyes move down to his arm, and she holds her hand out only inches from his chest.

  
  
  


For a moment his mind is sent back to the Star Destroyer, that little dark room.

  
  


The metal cuffs chaffing against the insides of his wrists as he tries desperately to find some leeway in them. The table he’s strapped to forcing him to overextend his shoulders against the freezing cold surface. The blood on the side of his temple is dried and beginning to itch, and his whole body aches from being held by the force.

He had heard of Jedi and Sith through word of mouth, that the force was something real and could be manipulated to their needs. But it had always been nothing more than a myth. One spice runner in the crew would speak of it often, that they had seen someone use it to move a card in a game years ago. Then his blaster, his body, and the shot he had fired had been held in place by Kylo Ren himself. 

The man was tall, and threatening. Some whisper in the back of his head had told him that he was in pain, no matter how strong he looked. That his weakness lied in his emotions, not unlike his own. 

He could barely breathe, as if his lungs were stuck in an exhale position. Every moment or so he’d have to struggle to get his lungs to work again, trying to lift the incredible pressure in his chest upward enough to sneak in a breath. 

Kylo Ren stands in front of him, silent and foreboding against the dimly lit walls of the room, raising his gloved hand to Poe’s chest. He stands as a black hole in the center of the room, observing his subject with such a ferocity that Poe can feel the sweat beginning to bead against his forehead. 

For the first time in his life, he feels someone going through his memories. 

A dark, angry hand shuffling the papers of his mind. Tearing against the walls of his consciousness and screaming for an answer. He pushes against this presence out of pure instinct, getting sharp stabbing pain in the middle of his head in return. He fights the energy until the sharpness spreads down his neck and into his spine. 

He can barely breathe and yet he’s screaming in pain, still fighting with all his might.

  
  


“Hey- hey!” 

There’s a hand on chest.

  
  


The metal room fades away, small pieces of the base forming in its place. He gasps, desperately grabbing every ounce of air his lungs will allow. He’s teetering forward, landing hard on his left palm. For a moment he just stays there, gasping and sobbing as he tries to get his heart pumping again. There’s a bigger crowd around them than he remembers from earlier. His mind swims, the shapes of his onlookers swirling slightly as his eyes try to readjust to the light. 

“Poe! Hey, hey, hey  _ relax. _ ” The General puts a hand on his face, drawing his attention back to her. He can barely focus, his eyes trying to move unsteadily across the room, searching for any discrepancies that could tell him he was dreaming. 

With a sad smile, she takes his good hand in her’s and squeezes it lightly. 

“I’m sorry Poe.” His eyes finally land on her, fluttering under the weight of his exhaustion. Her kind face is still blurring in and out, but he can hear her clearly.

His chest heaves as he wheezes out a ‘ _ Why?’ _

She coasts her thumb over the top of his hand, tracing a particularly bad scratch on the surface. “When my son captured you, he used the force to peer into your mind.” 

She glances down at his right arm. Cold air sends a swath of goosebumps up to his core as Organa releases his left hand and brings his right into view. 

He is suddenly very awake. 

“The hell?” Scoping the bruises on his arm does nothing for him other than adding itself to the list of fucked up things that had happened to him today. 

His arm is now such a deep purple that it resembles the pockets of space he flies through. But the bruising isn’t, in any way, the usual bodily reaction that normally occurs in injured humans. 

No, these bruises are strange.

Running the space from the top of his hand and wrapping down into a inch-wide, snake-like, spiral that pauses at the large tendon in his wrist. Any area that isn’t covered by this thick purple band is red and angry, burned and beginning to scab over already. 

There is a space in the middle area of his forearm that in 2 inches wide and stretches all the way around his arm that is untouched. His normal skin sticking out like a neon sign compared to the surrounding injury. Shakily, he brings his pointer and middle finger in tandem to the empty space and gently drags the fingertips across the skin. Immediately the nerves spark up and scream. He yelps as the entire arm seizes, his right hand involuntarily curling into a fist as his muscles spasm around the pain. 

“When he searched through your mind, he found what he was looking for.” She speaks again, calmly watching him explore the new wound. 

“But something else was found in the process.” She turns her hand over the separation and moves upward, leading his eyes to his elbow. 

Bruises coat the entirety of his upper arm, no breaks in the purple or large chunks of unaffected skin. There are dark patches, almost black, that speckle his upper arm. They swirl and stretch, clouds against a stormy sky. A large, black hole-like circle sits an inch above his elbow. It most resembles a blaster mark, but he can't remember being shot there. 

“I-“ He looks at her, fear curling itself deep in his core. “I don’t feel different.” Placing a steady hand on his good shoulder, she nods. There is a knowledge behind her eyes that ages her immensely, like the eyes of an ancient being are staring back at him. “It’s always been there. It’s been a part of you since the day you were born.” She lifts her hand and gently taps the center of his chest, the sound muffled by his shirt. 

“But it takes coming in contact with a similar user or object to awaken it.” 

She pauses to look at his wounds again, “And usually, a moment of powerful desperation to wield it.”

“The force.”

It comes out quiet, nearly a whisper as the pieces begin to fall into place. 

She nods, the corners of her eyes wrinkle as she smiles. His throat closes, he rakes a hand harshly against his chest. 

He’s a force-user.

Panic begins to grip him again, he inhales harshly, tilting his head up to try and keep himself above water. His whole mind is flooded, the black water wrapping its tendrils around his waist and yanking him under. He _ can’t _ be a force-user. The force is for Jedis and Siths. Not for dumb pilots who make bad descisions and get poor soldiers killed. Not for closeted disasters with no past and no emotional control.

Another realization bursts from the water and slams him below the surface. He could have killed them back there in front of the tie fighter. One wrong slip of the wrist and he could have taken out the girl or worse. 

He could have killed  _ him _ . 

“I- I don’t want this.” Voice warbling, he searches her for comfort. 

“We don’t chose what we are given.” She speaks calmly, leans back slowly and begins to stand. “The only thing we can chose is what to  _ do _ with what we  _ have _ .” 

He leans back, setting his good palm to the floor, effectively steadying himself. “How do I stop it?” He’s looking up at her, his eyes no doubt full of fear. 

She’s taken a tablet and is beginning to pour through the inevitably long list of things to be completed. A mechanic rushes by her and she holds out the tablet for them to take, watching as they quickly snatch it from her and skirt into the connecting chamber beside them. 

A quiet chuckle from her has his face growing hot. 

“You don’t Poe. You heal, you learn, and you train. You train hard, to keep that power from doing this-” She gestures to his arm. “Ever again.” 

He would give anything to be back in his ship right now. BB-8 behind him chirping little snide comments about Poe’s flying as they weave through the atmosphere. 

Instead he’s being helped up by an apprentice medic, his stomach doing flips as they lead him over to the medic station. 

He had no idea how he was going to do this. All of the Jedi had died off years ago. The only known one was Luke Skywalker, who hadn’t been seen in decades. He wasn’t entirely sure if they Rey girl was trained or if she had just...figured it out? 

Regardless, he wasn’t meant to be a Jedi. Even thinking about being labeled as one made him nauseous. 

He nearly stumbles over a large wire taped to the ground powering the make-shift medbay. The apprentice mumbles apologetically and helps steady him. She's very young, almost too young to be here. Her dark hair is plastered to her forehead, the rest tied back messily with an electric cord. 

Maybe he could just be-what had Organa called it-  _ ‘Force-sensitive _ ?’ Or maybe those two terms meant the same thing?

He kicks himself mentally for not paying more attention to her. Or at least asking more questions just now. 

His eyes wander slightly after settling in on the exam table. 

Slightly to his right there’s a gaggle of medics trying to help someone too small for Poe to see. Instead of giving them privacy like he normally would, he can’t pull himself away. Intently, he watches and waits for one of the medics to move of their own volition. 

He shifts slightly and has to bite back a scream when his shoulder aches. He had honestly forgotten about the blaster shot he had taken. It had happened so fast and hurt the least. He turns back to the other patient and nearly vomits. 

It’s Finn. 

Standing next to the doctor as they work on Rose’s injuries. He has a peculiar look plastered across his face as he watches her desperately. 

There’s a pang of jealousy that rattles around in Poe’s chest. The storm-trooper had chosen to stay with her and not with him. 

The exhaustion truly hits him then, as all hope to be in his favor dwindled from the pilot. The last remaining thing to keep him going had just been ripped from his hands, and all he wanted to do now was grab a book and find some deserted planet to spend the rest of his days on. He wouldn’t have to worry about the force if he never needed to use it. It would just stop bothering him, right?

A new extisential dread grips his heart. He can’t just leave this new life behind like he had with his last. This thing, this force isn’t a planet he can just take off and fly away from. It was new, and it was permanent. 

He lets his head hit the exam table with a thunk, deciding to avoid Finn by counting the stalagmites. 

Finally after 30 or so of the rock formations, a medical officer comes sauntering up to the table. Her glasses have a small spray of blood dried to the edge of the lense and her baby blue smock is coated in the fluid.

“Well what do ya know?! Captain Poe Dameron graces my presence. How enchanting!” 

She claps her hands together with the biggest shit-eating grin Poe has seen in a while. He can’t help but roll his eyes, a smile peeking through his pain-ridden expression. 

“It’s nice to see you too Dr. Niya.” It comes out without the normal cocky tone he normally uses. Her smile falters. “Good gods, what happened to you?” She makes her way around the equipment as a worried expression creases her face. 

“Oh come on now Doctor, worry has never been a good look on you.” She scoffs but there’s no amusement behind it. The tone of the group has shifted exponentially and Poe is left to try and pick up the pieces. 

She is murmuring something to one of her subordinates about finding ‘any pain reducers’ they can. 

It was not everyday Poe Dameron came into the medbay on a stretcher, let alone with this level of injury.

Normally he’s the one carrying the injured patient in. And if he was injured, he sure as hell wasn’t letting someone else take care of it. He had his own medical expertise he didn’t need a doctor to remove strapnel and sew a suture. He’d rather be a sobbing and shaky mess in the privacy of his own quarters than in the middle of the medical ward. 

This was no exception.

Nothing filled him with more disdain than letting a medic examine him. He’d only allowed it twice in his life. The first was when he first arrived at the Resistance base, to get his mandatory physical done. And the second was now. 

One of the assistants drew a scalpel up from a small tray standing next to the bed. His shirt was already open from the General’s examination earlier, so nothing was in the way of the small blade. He could feel himself tensing up.

“Okay isn’t this all a little unnecessary, Niya, why does there have to be a knife involved in this?” His voice is raising an octave with every inch closer the scalpel gets to his chest. He can’t see the blaster’s effect on his chest but he can tell that however it looked, it was not good enough to be let off with a simple patch-and-med. “Poe, I need you to take a deep breath, there’s fabric and dirt in the wound and if we don’t get it out it won’t close.” 

He’s tries to raise his left hand but another medic has beat him to it, quickly strapping his wrist to the table. He lets out a panicked yell as the medic holding the scalpel inches closer. “Can’t you just let me do this?” His words are moving faster than he can process them, falling from his mouth in a sporadic, sputtery mess.

The space behind his eyes feel hot as panicked tears begin to threaten to form.

“Poe I need you to stay still for me or this will end badly for all of us.” Niya speaks slowly, motioning for him to breath. Instead he gasps as the blade moves down, within an inch of the skin. 

Anger bubbles against the inside of his forehead, tightening its grip on his neck and chest. A familiar pressure makes itself known in his head alongside that anger. It swirls from some place just beyond his skin and coils. His entire brain runs on instinct. 

All he can do is protect himself. 

Suddenly the scalpel halts. He watches in confusion as the medic grunts in a mixture of pain and surprise. Her hand shakes slightly, and her eyes flicker wildly to the rest of the team. The group watches in stunned silence as the poor woman remains still, her face becoming a strange shade of red as she tries to gasp for breath. 

The team springs suddenly into action, a few spare members panicking and shouting orders at the others. There are a few onlookers, but Poe can’t see them. 

His eyes are still trained on that blade. 

Nothing matters now except that this blade will not touch him. There’s only been a few points where something this dangerous has come this close to him and he was not letting them do this to him in the middle of everything. 

A hand slaps the side of his face. 

He gasps for air, when was the last time he had taken a breath? 

The oxygen flooding his system helps ease the smarting in his cheek. Doctor Niya stands in front of him, panting slightly and absolutely furious. “Don’t do that!” She’s almost shouting, her voice shrill and loud. The poor medic takes a breath and falls backwards. He lets out a shout, that same pressure forming in his left hand as he throws it out towards her feebly hoping to catch her. The chain tethering his hand to the table creaks as he pushes it to its limit. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, waiting in the darkness for the telltale sound of a body hitting the floor. There are gasps, and the sound of people shuffling away from him. But no body hitting the ground. Cautiously, he opens one eye, glancing with a grim look on his face at the space below his bed. 

“Shit.” Poe groans. 

The medic is hovering inches from the ground, her hair falling flat against the floor and curling in random wafts. She lifts a hand, and rubs her eye blearily, blinking in harsh lantern light. There are small comments of disbelief and surprise that make Poe’s face hot. Embarrassment isn’t the correct word.  _ Humiliation.  _ That’s it. 

He relaxes his hand, letting her hit the ground with a soft thump. 

Niya rubs a worried hand around her face and lands it on his thigh. She mindlessly taps a rhythm on his leg as they both watch the team help their fallen friend up and out of Poe’s grasp. When she’s well and far enough away, Niya turns to him and raises an eyebrow. 

“Well stars, kid. Didn’t know you had that kind of power just laying around.” She pats his thigh and takes the other scalpel from the tray. 

“C-come on Niya we just went over this.” It’s a somewhat joking statement, as he tries to plead with her a second time. 

“No, we do this now or you die of an infection within the week.” 

He swallows and leans back into the soft, cushy table cover. He breathes in deeply, waiting until his lungs are completely full, nodding to Niya. "Okay, kid. Don't take me out like you did to my girl over there." It's almost a mutter as she readies the scalpel. He feels his shoulder tighten with anxious anticipation. "Just close your eyes, it'll be easier." 

So he does, letting the darkness sweep him away. 

It only took under a minute to completely remove the small pieces of material from the wound. He could feel her sweeping around the edges with sterile tools, scraping the dirt and fabric out if the small chasm-like injury. But another part of him, the larger part of his conscious mind, was far beyond where he rested.

Bright red and blue flashes light up the back of his head, an angry and scared presence against a sorrowful yet calm one. 

The younger presence, the angry one, screams loudly and he can swear he hears the sounds of the wind howling. 

The wiser is smiling, he can tell. It has something prepared that will put an end to this conflict. But their sorrow pinpricks small tears in Poe's eyes. A mournful feeling swells for a moment between his eyes. 

"Alright. We're done here."

His eyes flick open as the doctor gently pats him. She's motioning for him to sit up, another medic tentatively making their way over with a sling. 

"Yangia will get you settled here and you can go back to flying recklessly or whatever it is you do." He can't help but smile a little at this snarky comment. "Thank you." She quirks an eyebrow in bemused surprise. "Come on Captain Dameron you aren't on death row yet, there's no need to be so serious." She lets it trail off for a moment as she sets the sickeningly bloody tool back onto the tray. "It's, how did you put it? Oh right," She turns back to him with another grin on her face. 

"It's never been a good look on you." 


	3. Chapter 3

Everything went so fast that he honestly could barely recall the next few events without others to fill in the large gaps. The cannon had charged completely and was beginning to break through the barrier. C3PO had mentioned the possibility of another, uncharted escape route, and they had followed the crystalline creatures through a thin set of tunnels. 

This is around where he can pick up parts of the story, but not much of it made sense.

He was running, more of an injured jog honestly, through the last part of the tunnel. The light just a ways ahead bled its golden glow into the divots in the walls beside him. He had let a few of the faster scouts take the lead, trying to keep a bit of his mangled pride intact. The pair of presences he had felt on the table were still going strong somewhere in the back of his head, drawing a small, constant, portion of his focus away from his surroundings.

That was until the wiser presence suddenly took his full attention.

It felt...blue. Like the sun reflecting against an ocean. Bright and vivid and hopeful, but ancient all the same. Within a second, it was gone.

That blue light disappeared like a candle in the wind.

He stumbled slightly over his own feet, smashing ungracefully against the stone wall of the tunnel. A fighter gave a slight grunt and circled back for him. Asking him something that he just couldn't for the life of him seem to hear. 

That deep empty space felt too large and overwhelming and as the younger presence, now alone, shook in anger- He could feel it.

It _mourned_.

It trembled in fear, and it _mourned_. 

Suddenly, just beyond his mental grasp, presences from everywhere wailed in harmony. There were two strong voices that felt the closest mourned the loudest, shaking him to his core. The world around him for that moment felt nothing but despair.

He didn't feel such sadness. 

For a small second his world swam as tears formed from the sheer emotion he was forced to endure. His temples screaming from the pressure. But only one tear fell, which he quickly swiped it away. Someone was beside him, speaking shakily at him. They tripped slightly, and Poe instinctively reached out to steady them. "Thanks, Poe."

"Finn?" It comes out as a squeak. The gorgeous man in question is stumbling alongside him, the red dust highlighting the exhaustion in his face all too well. "Hey, are you alright?" His voice makes him sound genuinely worried.

It tugs at some feeling in the pit of his stomach, making it flip unceremoniously. Bile rises in his throat.

He can see it again. Finn like a lost puppy on the field as Rose pulls him in. Kisses him right then and there. 

Does exactly what _he's_ wanted to do since the day he took off that helmet.

"Yeah, I'm just peachy." He pauses. The light is growing brighter, and a lot of the scouts have circled back, falling behind them to let the acting Captain lead. His gaze flicks back to Finn, his eyes are slightly teary as he stares hopefully at the exit. "What about you, loverboy?"

It comes out before he can stop himself. The other seems taken aback, which he doesn't blame him for. 

Never once, in the past few months had Poe given Finn a nickname. A lot of the others called him Stormtrooper still, but it had less venom than it normally did. Poe had plenty that he could use, _theoretically_. But, he had never found himself comfortable enough to use them in person, always finding the name he had given him much easier to stomach than something as ridiculous as _Loverboy_.

"Wh- what. Love- loverboy?" Finn cycles through a few thoughts before spitting his nickname back out at him. He lets out a laugh that startles the pilot, sending sparks down his chest. "I've never heard that before." His laugh is interrupted by a snort, sending Poe's heart into overdrive.

They are at the lip of the cave now, the near-blinding white light bleeding against the stormtrooper's features, displaying them nicely for the other to gawk at. He tries his hardest to keep his breathing steady as his stomach flips. 

“How’s Rose?” It makes him slightly nauseated to even say it, but he needs to be friendly to him at the least. He clears his throat slightly, realizing that maybe this wasn’t the proper time to talk casually when the First Order was a minute away from storming the base. His hands feel clammy as Finn gives him a quizzical look, his eyebrows furrowing in some adorable form of focus. 

“She’ll be fine-” He perks up before the end of the sentence, suddenly distracted by something. He’s beaming as he looks at a large pile of rocks towering before them. 

But Poe wasn't watching anymore. The heat in his cheeks and chest are not from infatuation, but dread.

The “light” they had been seeing was at the very top of this cavern pooling down and making the whole area look like an exit. 

“Shit.” Poe runs his good hand through his soaked hair, his throat tight. The sound of the cannon piercing through was shaking the entire cave system and the last remains of the Resistance were trapped in a corner. “Shit!” He kicks one of the rocks, balancing precariously on his uninjured leg, shaking slightly at the almost numb throbbing sensation that envelopes his toes.

He’s yelling now, a few of the pilots are catching up, reaching the edge of the entrance and sighing in defeat. General Leia is being supported by a younger blonde woman in a Captian’s blazer. They both look exhausted. But Leia is strangely quiet as she watches one of her subordinates launch a rock angrily into orbit beyond the hole in the ceiling. 

He turns to Finn, who is still smiling. 

He can feel his mood souring even further, as insane as that idea might be. The stormtrooper is just grinning from ear to ear as he gazes at the rocks before him. 

“Hey, buddy-“ He paces quietly back over to the other, letting a soft hand land on Finn’s upper arm as he leans in and whispers to him through clenched teeth. “What the hell are you smiling at? We are trapped-“ He taps his chest harshly with his good index finger.

Finn turns his grin towards him and Poe’s heart slams so hard against his sternum that he can hear it in his ears. “She’s here, Poe. Rey’s here.”

There’s a relief that he can’t quite place as he hears this. With her name comes a voice in the distance, someone yelling and a strange throaty sounding voice responding to them in a language he does not know. A soothing feeling coaxes his heartbeat into a slow, steady pace.

He wobbles slightly as he fights to keep his eyes open, his balance thrown off by his exhaustion. Finn puts a hand on his upper arm to steady him and mutters out a small ‘ _Whoa, buddy hey-’_ before he is gone from Poe’s vision completely. 

He is back in the inky black, walking aimlessly towards a feeling in the distance. Finn is still close, his life-force given some gaseous but still human-like shape next to him, its floating glittery ‘hand’ still hovering over his arm. The voice echoes against invisible walls, bouncing unpredictably around him. She feels incredibly close as if just beyond a pane of glass he cannot find. 

“Rey!” He yells, cupping his hands around his mouth, his injuries seemingly gone as he wanders a few more feet in this space. 

Rey appears several yards ahead, walking down the ramp of the Millenium Falcon. He had seen it at the base a few times in his life in the Resistance. He knew that entire ship by heart. 

Her feet hit the metal with a loud clunking sound that echoes across the large gap between them, she’s carefully watching her footfalls to ensure she doesn’t drop off the sides or stumble. Suddenly she stops and looks up at him. 

A shiver rolls up his spine, his throat tight as she glares almost completely through him. There is a sheer determination in her eyes that makes him feel terrified. How is he supposed to compare to this woman? Her power was physically potent, he could feel it hit him in small waves, like a slumbering tide against his very core. 

She blinks, and continues down the ramp, landing confidently about 5 yards from him.

“Rey-“ He falters slightly as she continues her path towards him, staring at something just beyond where he stands. “C-can you hear me?” She falters again, she’s shoulder to shoulder with him. The fabric of her lightsaber holster brushes up against the waistband of his pants right on the bruise at the base of his hip, and it takes a good amount of strength to keep himself from flinching on instinct, regardless of the lack of injury. 

Suddenly she turns to him, calm and almost unaffected. 

He realizes he’s breathing heavily, his hands scrunched shakily into fists as he tries to keep himself together enough to relay the message. 

“How are you doing that.” 

He blinks. Gazing dumbly at her as she speaks, her eyes roaming the surrounding void as if there’s something there. He jumps as a red rock comes tumbling from the canyon behind Rey, it rolls to a stop just before his feet. “I’m- I’m not sure. I just needed to talk to you.” He stumbles over his thoughts as he tries to adjust to the brightness of the daylight. They are still standing on Crait, but in some other segment of the planet, the ruby red of the stone being the dead giveaway to her location. 

She seems to still be focused on his surroundings, “Where are you?” 

“Actually, that’s why I’m here.” He turns so he’s facing her.

“The Resistance is stuck in the tunnels of the abandoned base. There must have been some sort of rockfall just before we got there and we’re caved in.” 

He runs a hand through his hair, his chest getting slightly tighter as he’s forced to retell the events again. The gravity of what will most likely happen certainly doesn’t give him any warm and fuzzy feelings. “I don’t think any of us can get through this without getting crushed.” Rey has a pained smile on her face as she listens.

“You’re scared.” 

“Yeah well, of course, I’m scared, Rey! There’s like _maybe_ 30 of us left, and if we don’t make it out, the Resistance is done for, and the First Order will have crushed the only spark left in the universe!” He throws his hands up, the frustration building in his voice. 

Rey nods, still smiling. 

“No. You’re scared of _him_.” She tilts her chin to the glittering form of Finn beside him, still frozen in place beside him. He whips his head back to her, stomach flipping wildly. 

“Don’t.” It’s a quiet kind of mutter, low and shaky as if he was trying to tame a wild animal. The bile rises in his throat, and he can feel his chest coiling in fear. 

“We-” He glances around, too wildly to remain calm in appearance. “We don’t have time to do this right now. I swear the second we are on the Falcon you can psychoanalyze me all you want.”

At first, he assumed his legs were less sturdy than he had expected, but as he glances down, he can see the small pebbles on the cave floor bouncing around like a loose carburetor chip on a crashing ship deck. 

The sound of marching footsteps sends his heart into an interesting set of palpitations that remind him of a drummer in a sleazy club band. "They're here, Rey." Not unlike most of this conversation, his words came out more shakily than he had wanted. 

"I'll find you. I promise." Rey nods to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, leaving a dusty handprint on his shirt.

He sighs and blinks.

And then he nearly hits the ground as the world spins out from under him.

"Poe-" Finn is grappling with gravity as he desperately tries to keep the pilot upright. 

He sets a warm hand on Poe’s cheek, cupping the entire left half of his face. Even as his stomach churns and his balance seeks to force him to the floor, it takes most of his focus to not press his face into the other’s hand. To reach up and gently cover Finn’s fingers with his and to fall so deeply that he wouldn’t be able to tell up from down. 

He fails to keep a soft smile from growing on his face as Finn’s worried look fills his chest with a floaty, bubbly warmth. A shiver runs a streak up his arms and into his neck, throwing the hairs to a stand from the sheer temperature difference between the two men.

“Hey.” It’s a comfy, mellow word that drifts past his lips and into the unbearably still air. Finn’s face softens, and he’s suddenly fighting a kind upward turn of the corner of his mouth as his eyes bore deeply against Poe’s skin. 

The stormtrooper’s hand is wrapped around his good arm, struggling to keep the limb in the socket and keep him upright at the same time. 

“Are you okay? We kinda lost you there for a second.” Finn’s glancing oddly at the rest of the room, drawing his attention to their onlookers. 

His face blooms with the heat, his cheeks pinking up nicely as his embarrassment takes its place at the conductor’s podium. He gapes, feeling the air dry out his tongue as it sweeps through the inside of his mouth. 

As he begins to speak, throat and hands trembling, a rock nearly the size of his head comes flying between him and Finn. 

The stormtrooper pulls him in even closer and dives backward, as a landslide of gravel and boulder comes smashing down nearly on top of where they had been standing. 

Standing in the new, white light of day beyond the wall is Rey. The rocks that had sealed the Resistance in from the other side were floating like islands in the air. As Poe scanned through this astounding scene, he noticed how effortlessly Rey used the force. 

She was simply standing at the end of the clearing, the Falcon behind her glinting in the cold winter sun. If she’s struggling to maintain her powers, she certainly isn’t showing it. 

Poe searches her with an almost embarrassing certainty for a shaking limb or a droplet of sweat and turns up with nothing. Not even her breathing is labored, its as if she casually lifted the rocks without her heartbeat so much as faltering. 

“Rey!” Finn’s warm hands are gone from Poe’s waist and suddenly he’s teetering quickly back towards the ground. He manages to stumble forward and gain his momentum before he lands on his ass. The stormtrooper seems to ignore his _‘Good God-_ ’ and continues in his bee-line for the Jedi.

In the majority of his war-ridden life, Poe Dameron had seen plenty of heartwarming reunions. 

Especially after the New Republic was decimated by the Starkiller Base- he had seen maybe twenty lucky souls touch down on the soil of the Resistance base and get instantly clasped into the arms of their loved ones. Poe hadn’t had many of those reunions in his lifetime. 

There were plenty of the moments _before_ a reunion would have occurred.

The bated breath, the nauseous horrible dread that wraps itself against your throat, the fidgety jovial attitude the others around you try to display with no avail. 

But none of those reunions were ever completed. 

His mother had not returned. Neither had his father. And half of his battalion was taken out during the first year of his leadership. 

It became a certainty that he would see every crew member come and go eventually. If he made it out of this war and didn’t get caught in the crossfire.

And this was no exception. 

He stood meekly at the back of the group as the Resistance survivors flowed through the new opening of the cave into the sunlight. 

Rey is beaming brightly, a completely new sight to the pilot, as she pulls Finn into a bear hug. 

Something in Poe’s bad arm twinges in time with his heartbeat. He scrunches his hands into shaky fists as he stares at the unlikely pair. 

The sunlight seems too bright to be real, like the part of dream he can’t quite remember, distant and shimmering. Finn’s laugh sweeps through his hair with the wind, curling softly against his face and gently moving the hair from his face. He can barely breathe and yet he is almost sighing at the sound. 

He hadn’t heard that sound in months, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to sob or start laughing along with him. Finn’s still hugging Rey, spinning her around in a clumsy, overexcited circle that falters at the end as she squeals and slaps his shoulder. He lets her down, still giggling like a schoolboy as he holds out a hand. 

She takes it _so casually_. 

Poe can taste the sourness in his mouth as his jealousy does everything to him but turn him green. It's such a small action that makes him want to pull out his pistol and shoot the bastard in the back. 

He closes his eyes and suppresses a groan as his temper kicks his heart rate up, making his veins perform their own unique and painful drumbeat against the bruised skin. 

“Poe?”

He glances back up with a start, realizing that he is now the only one left in the cave. The rest of the Resistance is piled uncomfortably into the small cabins of the Millenium Falcon, awaiting their pilot to return. 

Rey is standing closer to the entrance now, her hand extended to him. Her smile is slightly crooked as she tilts her head, watching him curiously. 

Shakily he sweeps up her small hand with his uninjured one, letting her lead him towards the ship. 

“Let’s get you set up in a room-” She turns to him as he struggles to get himself up the ramp.

Chewie ruffles his hair and yells something at him, which he’s too tired to translate, Rey laughs. 

“What did he say?” Finn asks, slightly distracted as he tries to get his gun holster off without tumbling to the ground. Rey has a grin on her face as Chewie rumbles again, heading back towards the cockpit. 

“He says Poe looks like he just got his bell rung.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a year.   
> A year since the Resistance barely escaped Crait, a year since Rey returned to the Resistance with a grasp on her powers and purpose, and year since Poe had been handed a pair of binoculars and made one of the worst mistakes of his life (in his opinion)  
> They’ve won the war. But why does Poe feel like he’s still fighting something?

"You haven't been out of your cabin in over a week, Poe." Rey's voice crackled sterny over the message board by his bed. 

He groaned and wrapped the edge of the covers around his good arm and rolled away from the comms panel, ignoring the ache that ran down his forearm.

He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, but it wasn't like he'd done great at keeping most things down long enough, the pain in his shoulder and leg made him nauseous even on his best days.

He jumped slightly as she continued speaking. "I am sending a medic to come get you. You're having lunch in the mess hall today." 

Sleepily he blinked at the clock on the nightstand, groaning again at the amount of hours he had spent fitfully in bed. It was nearly midday, meaning lunch was only half an hour away. 

That thought rattled around his numb head for a moment before he shot up.

Rey was sending a medic in half an hour to come get him and he was not even  _ remotely _ decent. 

"Oh shit. Shit shit shit!" He tossed the blanket off, tensing against the temperature change with a huff. 

Still half asleep, he unsteadily made his way to the cabin's tiny storage module, grumbling angrily when he couldn't find a good pair of pants. He had almost settled on a pair of normal slacks, when he realized he couldn’t get his bad leg through them without an extreme amount of discomfort. 

“Damn it.” It’s almost a yell, as he launches the pair of pants across the room in a childish fit. There’s a pair of soft, elastic-lined light grey pants tucked into the corner of the storage module. With a grumble, he makes the embarrassing decision that these are the only plausible option. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he set off on the task of fitting his injured leg through the leg of the pants, desperately trying to avoid scraping the stitches along the inner fabric. 

It takes an embarrassingly long time to get his leg through but as soon as he’s done, there’s a loud, authoritative knock on the door. 

“General Dameron, I was told to transport you to the mess hall? Are you decent?” 

He felt the heat rise into his neck as he realized the voice was male. 

_ ‘Oh God _ .’ His muscles are slightly tense as his dumb, gay brain forces a few random, entirely inappropriate scenarios to play through his head. 

His voice cracks as he yells a  _ ‘Yep _ !’ towards the door and gropes at the pair of gloves on his nightstand. Although he had gotten his bell rung almost a year ago, the marks the force gave him on his hands never truly faded. The purple had turned into a dark pink, scarring in large patches and little sporadic lighting bolts across the skin on his fingers. There was a sizeable enough gap between where the scarring on his wrist ended and the scarring on his forearm began that he managed to avoid looking too prudish. 

He could still roll up his sleeves without having to field questions or acknowledge strange looks as he works. 

  
He had spent a lot of time repairing random ships before they got the message that Palpatine was still alive- somehow. Actually, he spent almost  _ all _ of his free time fixing ships that came back from the reaches of the Galaxy. Finn spent an abhorrent amount of time with Rose, who Poe had known for years. Of course he cared about her, and of course he wanted them both to be happy.   
  


He gripped the left glove, shoving it on roughly as a bitter taste swamped his mouth, adjusting the sling carefully back in place.

  
But they were so  _ damn  _ happy all the time. Even in their best moments, he and Finn had never laughed the way they did together. And when it happened with Poe around, he felt like he was holding that pair of binoculars again.    
  


Always watching behind a piece of glass. Observing what could have been with a potent bitterness, a palpable sorrow. 

  
He was more tedious with the right glove, gently slipping his fingers into the confines of the soft leather, careful to avoid catching the fried nerves on the fabric. 

“Come in!” He shouted, not breaking his gaze from the task he had set out on. 

With that, the door to the cabin opens with a quiet whirring sound, and he roughly yanks the last part of the glove over his palm in a panic. 

The young man is wearing a Gunner's uniform, which comes as a surprise to Poe. Not many people wore their uniforms unless there was a meeting that day. He didn’t doubt that there was a meeting, most likely with the heads of the New (New) Republic. The Resistance was in the throes of disbanding, and reforming as the NNR.

Given that they had won. The entire thing.    
The war that he had been fighting his entire life was won by a random girl and a force-sensitive stormtrooper. 

  
He wasn’t too much help in the heat of the final battle, although he arguably  _ could _ have been if he’d just admitted a few things beforehand.    


But he hadn’t.   
In fact, it had taken a little over a year of hiding his abilities and scars from everyone, but he had somehow managed to scrape by without anyone knowing, and only a few injuries. Including a seared leg and a blaster shot to the elbow.

Poe had been asked by several officials to continue to lead as an officer of the Republic, to which he had politely declined. 

Much to everyone's surprise, apparently. 

With Finn beginning his Force-training, Poe didn't have anyone to co-lead with. And he didn't really see a point to it all anymore. 

As Leia had always said, he had a knack for strategy but a horrible sense for politics. 

He forced his mind to go blank at the thought of Leia. He wasn’t ready to talk or even think about her yet. He’s not entirely sure if he ever will. 

  
  


The young man waiting to escort him seemed nice. Too young to have been in the war, but Poe wasn't surprised. He was most likely born into the Resistance, a legacy officer not unlike himself. 

He was standing awkwardly behind a wheelchair, his hands nervously wrapped around the handles.

He must have seen Poe examining the device, because he squeakily speaks. 

"I didn't think you could use the crutches, sir...since-" He motions sheepishly to Poe's arm, which is covered in bandages and laid uncomfortably in a sling.

He lets his  _ 'you know'  _ fall away awkwardly. 

Poe finds it suddenly hard to remain serious around this kid, he seems sweet, but the awkwardness he can feel pouring out of him is almost too irresistible to not mess with. 

But before he can speak, the young man pushes the wheelchair forward, coming to a halt a good foot away from him. “W-we should get going, Sir. Rey is expecting you.” 

_ ‘Probably one of Rey’s little proteges’ _

“Right, right.” He shakes himself out of his thoughts and presses his hand to the soft surface of the mattress. Biting on the inside of his cheek, he forces himself upright as the muscles in his back groan. 

He wasn’t even remotely old enough to be suffering from the aches and pains he had experienced over his lifetime, but he found it best to just grin and bear it. His feelings were nobody’s but his own, and he did a damn good job of keeping it that way. 

With a slight huff, he plopped ungracefully into the seat of the wheelchair, gripping the handles in surprise as it rolled backwards a few inches. 

With a little difficulty, they manage to get through the doorway without Poe having to get out, which is truly a blessing. 

His mind drifts almost instantly, tuning out the small talk the Gunner was trying to make unsuccessfully. He quietly observes the still-bustling halls of the base, a few able-bodies rushing through the more crowded and condensed bends of the hallway. 

He could feel a small bit of heat flush his neck as he realizes how bulky the wheelchair is. He went through these same stages of grief every time he had to travel anywhere beyond his room. For a second, he could swear he caught a glimpse of Finn in the distance. He shook his head. 

  
Rose and Finn were off somewhere off planet, discussing trading charters with noble diplomats and eating nice food at some candlelit dinner. 

Like something out of a fairytale- which wouldn’t be a bad book premise, honestly. A Rebel Soldier kisses a StormTrooper, turning him into a handsome and powerful prince who saves the galaxy with his best friend the Grand Wizard of Jakku.    
He snorts slightly, thinking about a wizard coming from a nowhere planet like Jakku. Not that it's far off from what actually happened, but there’s no way anyone would believe it if they hadn’t met Rey. 

He makes a mental note to speak with Finn about dismantling the slave trade on Jakku, which would probably be set on the backburner, but would make one hell of a birthday gift for a certian Jedi.    
He could probably just suggest the idea to Finn and let him take the lead, like their usual agreement.

General Finn will see to the meetings, and you’ll never see General Dameron unless you’re an unlucky bastard.

Poe had become an iron fist to the residents of the base, as infighting still occurred now that tensions had fallen away for the most part, people were beginning to air out their grievances.

And with the other General rarely planet-side, the legendary Dameron would be forced make a rare appearance. 

  
Normally disgruntled and tired, with a coffee or some other drink in his hand, he’d roll in and the room would go silent. Just once he had managed to sneak into the mess hall unnoticed. It was the most normal he had felt since the war had ended. 

  
Someone’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts, the soft orange glow receding from the corners of his vision.

“-take it from here.” They sound familiar, their soft voice coming from his left. 

He tries to turn out of habit, but stops short as his blaster wound sends a warning shot up his shoulder. “Ugh-Jesus-” He bites out, gripping his shoulder with his slightly better hand. The person behind him stifles a laugh, covering it up poorly by clearing their throat. “Right, as I said.” They let the rest hang, unsaid, in the air. 

“R-right! Yes sir.” There's a slight ruffle of fabric and a ‘ _ That’ll be all. _ ’ and suddenly his escort is walking past him. No doubt, that he had saluted to whomever was now taking over his delivery to Rey. 

And a salute would mean-

_ Shit. _

“Hey buddy.” It comes out much too happy. A smile takes him by surprise. He hasn’t actually smiled in so long that the muscles in his cheeks start to ache almost immediately. 

Finn leans over his right shoulder, a grin big enough to overshadow his any day. His throat feels a little too tight for comfort, and he finds himself rolling the ring on his necklace nervously. 

  
“Sorry for not calling you when we got back, I had a meeting with the heads as soon as I landed and then Rose-” He cuts himself off with a giggle that makes Poe’s stomach flip. He can’t tell if his mouth is trying to form a grimace or a smile, but he’s fighting it regardless. 

“She dropped this really expensive glass artifact that the Mericry people gave us as a peace offering as soon as we landed and-” He finally breaks, his voice hitching as he bends over to laugh. It lasts for a few unbearable seconds as Poe tries his hardest not to start laughing himself.

Finn had just continued to become more cheerful the farther into the distance the Resistance faded. The complete opposite of Poe, who was on the steady decline into a full breakdown.

He couldn’t really place a reason. He had been one of the most active pilots, and when they were still in the midst of the end, when there were still uprisings in favor of the First Order he had always been on the front line.    
  


But now there was nothing to fight for. He’d spent his whole life running and fighting to keep those he loved out of harm’s way. And now, after years of watching the number of people in his inner circle dwindle into the single digits, he felt lost. 

Rey had her own tasks, Finn too.    
And  _ Leia- _

He scrunched his better fist, digging the leather-covered fingers into his palm. Trying in some way to shake that feeling away. 

That voice, the one he had heard on Crait, had died with her. 

  
For nearly five months he made it a priority to dedicate every waking moment to work. To do anything to distract him from that strange, familiar ache he hadn’t felt since his mother failed to return from her mission.    
  


“Poe?” Finn’s leaning over his shoulder, his smile slightly lopsided as he tries to read through the pilot’s faraway gaze. His eyes snap back to Finn, his face growing hot. “Sorry- I just- long night.” He stutters his excuse out poorly, the words getting caught in the back of his throat as he tries to spit them out quickly. 

Poe forces a sickly smile onto face, praying that it doesn’t reek of fake happiness. 

“Are you alright, man?” The wheelchair comes to a stop, and Poe can feel a breeze hitting the back of his neck as Finn moves around the side. 

His heart drops instantly. ‘ _ Fuck- _ ’ he wants to cover his face, or to lean as far away as possible.

Finn’s wearing his General’s uniform. A cool grey military-style jacket and slacks with orange embellishments and piping that wraps around the cuffs and collar.

He  _ hates  _ that uniform. 

Finn never looks rough or dishevelled even in the worst times. But this uniform makes every inch of Poe’s skin feel like it's on fire. The man could wear it to a wedding and outshine the bride. The grey brings out the warm pink in his skin and the orange brings out his eyes like a summer sun. 

He nods and clears his throat, hoping to relieve the tightness spreading downwards towards his stomach. “Yeah I’m always alright, why?”    
Finn squints, his smile finally melting into concern. He tightens his lips slightly, and Poe can feel his heartbeat in his legs. His hands are still tightly balled, his slinged wrist aching painfully. 

“Okay, well obviously you aren’t. No one who’s doing alright responds with ‘I’m always alright’.”    
Finn kneels in front of the wheelchair, rolling his eyes and Poe’s blood pressure spikes. He’s within a foot of him, touching distance. _ Kissing distance _ . 

  
Poe suddenly finds himself standing up quickly and shakily, surprising both of them. “Ya know what- I think I’m just gonna walk.” He mumbles, using his bad leg to kick the wheelchair backwards and away from him. Every motion he’s making is awkward and jerky and his normal internal monologue has turned to embarrassed screaming.    
  


“Hey, Poe wait what-” His hand wraps around Poe’s better hand, gently pulling him back towards him. He jerks his arm out of the General’s grasp, muttering a low ‘ _ Let go of me _ .’ 

“What is going on with you?” Now he’s angry, he can hear it. It’s that aggravating cadence his voice takes, it's lower and slower with the last syllable in the sentence being emphasized aggressively. It was as if he was designed to be perfect and piss Poe off at the same time.    
Every time Finn broke out that voice he felt like he was a child again, ready to punch him in the back of the head and pull his pig-tails. 

“Nothing Finn! Good god can you just stop asking?” He snaps, letting his hand fall to his side. He takes a confident step backwards, trying his best to stifle his limp. 

“What? I’m not allowed to ask you questions anymore? What’s going on man?” 

“You are  _ unbelievable _ !”

“ _ I’m _ unbelievable?” 

“Yes!”

He bites out a bitter laugh, the anger bubbling up his throat. “You know it is  _ so funny _ that you think you can come back to base and act like  _ I’m _ the one being weird!”  He smiles, letting the sneer fill his face as some horrible form of catharsis sweeps him off his feet. 

  
“You come back here after spending every waking moment with her and every time you come back you expect us to be buddy-buddy again!” It's a shout before he can stop it. His jaw feels tight against his teeth, his heart beat feels like it's stoking a fire in his brain. 

“What does Rose have to do with anything Poe- leave her out of it!”    
  


_ ‘That’s it.’ _

Poe had never really been too in tune with his emotions, he felt things strongly on the off chance that he felt anything at all. His moral compass was stronger than most real leaders in the galaxy, and he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind for the better of the universe.    
But he also had the uncanny ability to know exactly when he was about to explode. 

“You expect me to spill my guts to you Finn?! You expect me to sit at the same table as you both and discuss the damn weather when you're both lying to everyone!” 

He slams his fist into the side of his thigh, letting the ache take over.    
“How?! How am I- how are  _ we _ lying to everyone?” Finn’s voice feels like gas to a flame.    
  


“You  _ kissed _ her Finn! You spend every waking moment with her and you _ kissed her _ !” 

His stomach drops so fast he thinks the next thing to come out of his mouth may be bile. There’s a certain heat around his temples that he hasn’t felt since he broke one of the windows in his childhood bedroom. He can’t make eye contact. He  _ won’t  _ make eye contact, he doesn’t deserve to. Unsurprisingly, he had let his hotheadedness take over. 

Finn’s hand drops with a smack on the side of his hip, the fabric rustling softly against the skin of his hand. His face is soft but his eyes tell a completely different story. They are radiating a sadness, like he’s hurt by Poe even knowing about it. 

When he speaks again, it's much quieter, much more cautious, and it strikes a tremor through Poe’s arms. 

  
“How do you know that.” 

  
His hands feel weak, like when he had to leap out of bed in the middle of the night and get into his heavy pilot’s uniform. Somehow, even as the panic begins to wrap its hot fingers around his stomach, he’s thinking clearer than he has in months. Probably a testament to his stress-training but he can feel himself subconsciously planning his escape.

_ ‘The door is only a yard or two away, but without the chair I’m screwed.’  _   
  


“Heard it on the grapevine, we all know how chatty Rose can be-” Carefully he eyes the General, keeping a decent distance between them as he slowly hobbles towards the closest door. 

Finn takes a strong step forward, “Poe.”    
“Finn.” He repeats it in the same cadence.

He’s fighting a coy smile, trying to cool the situation he set to boil.    
Finn’s face grows stern in an instant. It was slightly off-putting, he normally was on the receiving-but-not-looking end of that glare. He wasn’t sure where to look, his throat growing warm as Finn raised an eyebrow. 

  
“Jesus- Fine!” He throws his hands up after a few horrible seconds.    
“I saw it! On Crait, after she crashed her ship into yours to save you, I-”    
Finn takes another step forward, Poe taking a set of big steps backward instinctively, his sentence cut off in surprise. 

“So you saw all of that- over a year ago, and didn’t say anything to either of us?” Finn’s snarl sends an odd pang through his chest. It hurts but he already misses it. 

“Why? Rose and I talked about it, I barely remember wh-” He stumbles over his words, coming to sudden stop.    
And then the worst thing that could happen in that moment happens. 

Finn’s face screws tighter for a moment, his forehead wrinkling cutely as he finally stops to think. Poe can feel the water in his blood boiling in terror. All it took was one inkling of what was really going on behind his closet door to tear down the whole damn wall.    
The air around him feels too heavy to move, freezing the breath caught in his throat.    
Finn makes a quiet sound, like the gears in his brain were whirring too loudly to contain.

He knows. If he doesn’t know then he’s seconds away from knowing what he shouldn’t know. Every piece of fabric that is touching him feels too hot to bear.    
  
“Wh...why are you so upset about this?” 

He breaks eye contact, letting the question hang in air for a moment as his mind collapses like a cold souffle. He’s sweating, the skin on his hands sticking to the inside of his gloves. He opens his mouth, hoping that the words would form in thin air as he spoke them. Nothing came to him but the cold air hitting the back of his throat. 

“I’m not.” 

He tests the sentence out, forming an accidental question as his own mind short circuits on its ridiculousness of it all. His voice hitched higher on the last word, making Finn’s brow furrow ever deeper into the bridge of his nose.    
Poe can barely hear what he’s thinking, his heart beat feels like the loud bassline to a song he can’t even begin to comprehend. His chest heaves up and down so harshly that he’s suddenly worried that Finn can hear his labored breathing. 

Before he can react Finn is in his face, setting his whole soul aflame. It feels incredibly silent and insanely loud all at the same time, his whole world crumbles and reforms in different shapes around him. Finn may be a force-sensitive, but unfortunately so was Poe. Each being in existence had a unique signature, those who were force-sensitive had an even more unique presence, and Poe had habitually found comfort in Finn’s.    
  


His guard dropped faster than tie-fighter debris when he got too close, and right now he could see the gold speckles in Finn’s dark-wood eyes. His hand twitches as he instinctively tries to move it towards the stormtrooper’s face, his fingers stretching out towards the man so close to him that it’s almost unbearable.    
  


“You are.” Finn grips him by his better wrist, the glove acting as his only sliver of self control from completely disappearing. If he couldn’t see how hard Poe was breathing before, he certainly can now, he could probably see the fabric of his shirt shifting heavily up and down like a neon flag in the wind. 

“I’m-” He breathes, it's barely audible against the sea of sound his brain has put in front of him. He can hear the waves in the distance, the ocean that always exists just beyond the horizon of his vision, the birds screeching against the sound of the water.    


He wants so desperately to fall into that soft feeling of Finn, those jagged corners he’d torn between them would melt away and they’d be back where they were on the rebel base. Reunited, clasping harshly into each other’s arms. 

Finn’s barring some teeth as he speaks, it's somewhat hushed as a pair of relayers weave past the objects the two have left in their wake.

“Are you gonna tell me, Poe? Or are we gonna stand here all day?” Every few words he yanks at Poe’s wrist, sending sparks through his stomach. That feeling hits his chest again, it burns but he can’t wait for the next time it happens. 

  
  


He opens his mouth again, attempting to ignore how close they are, his closeted brain trying its hardest to make him just say it. To state how deeply, and ashamedly in love with this man he is. Every moment he was around him, he fought to keep his sanity.    
  


“Answer me, _ General _ .” It's a command. He can feel the bile burning its way up his throat. His eyes water as the burning spreads into every limb. The ‘general’ stings a great deal more, knowing that this is Finn’s way of calling him unprofessional. He knows he’s _not_ professional, but coming from him, it hurts. 

“Why do you care so much about this- why does this matter?” 

The questions start to batter in, and he can feel his defense crumbling. The walls are caving in and there's no grip he can find that will get them to stay put. “Seriously-what is your problem? Even if we were a thing, why would that be a problem with you?” 

Finn’s continues to dig his fingers in deeper. He’s basically gasping for air now, his breathing audible as he clamps his eyes down to avoid looking at him. 

The stormtrooper ignoring his ‘ _ stop _ ’ and  _ ‘please let’s just drop it _ ’ to continue his frontal assault on his Co-General. The final straw feels like minutes later, when in reality its mere milliseconds.    
It's somewhere between the questions that a pressure begins to build between his fingers, a familiar sensation that he can’t quite place. Like the words to a song he hadn’t heard since childhood. There is an anger that boils so loudly in his chest that it floods up his throat and into his eyes, making tears pool just before the edge of his eyelids. He grits his teeth trying to hold back the tsunami lying just beyond his lips. 

  
“Why do you care so much about this kiss, Poe?” 

And suddenly it breaks through. A pressure bursts brilliantly against his palm and he leans into it, craving that pressure to strike him deep in his heart. For the third time he opens his mouth, hoping to explain his way out. But instead all he hears is shouting.

  
“Because it wasn’t _ me _ !” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It was you.” His heart stops for a moment, his hand frozen over the joystick. He stares straight ahead, hoping that if he just doesn’t acknowledge that it won’t happen.
> 
> “What was me?” He says it so casually that any bystander wouldn’t even suspect that he had basically just made a public love confession.

The world is immediately dark.

For a second he assumes he’s just blacked out, raised his heart rate too high too quickly and his body just decided he was dying and fixed the problem itself. His ears are ringing and the back of his neck feels tight. 

Something brushes against his cheek, there’s light pooling from some doorway a few yards down, illuminating them and the surrounding hall in a faint dawn-like glow.    
  


A small chunk of the floor is floating next to his face. Another is drifting between his eyes, crossing between the two Generals in slow motion, slightly bigger than the last. 

He quickly swipes at his eyes, trying to scrub the tears out before Finn can see his face again.

The stormtrooper seems to snap out of the shock, blinking dumbly in the dark as he tries to figure out what’s happening. Muttering a ‘ _ what the hell _ ?’ as he clumsily releases Poe’s wrist and turns to the side. The floor beneath them is shattered, breaking up in random peaks and valleys. 

  
It hasn’t hit him yet, what Poe had said..well screamed. 

The lights above them have burnt out, one a few yards away still flickering valiantly against the dark. The windows are strung with spiderweb cracks, small pieces of glass sprinkle to the ground beneath them, littering the floor with tiny crunches under every footfall. The concrete walls are breaking in random spirals and segments, large pieces of the painted stone collapsing loudly to the floor. Poe can feel the embarrassment forming a unique heat in his face and neck as he surveys the damage he’s caused.    
  


Poe takes a limped step backward. The chair is still too far away from him to be subtle with it. 

  
“Fuck it.”

It's a grumble. Letting the pressure swirl within his palm again, he focuses that shift in energy towards the chair. The sound of the motionless wheels being lifted seems to draw Finn’s attention, as suddenly he’s turning on his heel. Poe can feel his shock, and underneath it, his excitement. 

There’s a heady kind of thrill that rushes through him as he hopes it's about what had just happened. But he’s setting himself up for disappointment, he can feel it. 

The wheelchair crashes to the ground loudly, as the skillful pilot uses his masterful ability. It no doubt looks ridiculous to the other General, who can levitate  _ himself  _ now. Even the basics send painful sparks down his arms when he uses the force too often. It clatters loudly to the ground, Poe letting out a grunt as the pressure uncoils from his lungs. 

His breathing is still shallow. The inside of his nose is cold, and he habitually sniffs and rubs it with his knuckle hoping to somehow change the feeling.    
  


Finn tries to say something but seems to taper off, still trying to collect his thoughts. 

Poe lands ungracefully into the seat of the wheelchair, the broken and uneven ground rolling the chair diagonally away from his Co-General. His head is pounding heavily, making a quiet ‘whooshing’ kind of sound in his ears, like running water or the wind rushing past. 

His chest feels so incredibly tight, like a uniform he’d grown out of years ago that he’d never had time to take off. He can barely keep his eyes open, the comforting call of his bed dragging him desperately back to his room. 

He catches a quick glance back around the hallway before placing his hand on the control panel of the chair. It was a slightly rowdy machine, so he normally just asked someone to escort him to wherever he was going, but now he was given no choice. It was this or sit in horrible silence with Finn. 

His stomach dropped just thinking about it, he had already spilled too much just from being that close to him. God only knows what would happen if he stayed. Some strange part of him desperately wants to say something. To break this heavy silence that he can’t seem to get out from under.    
But instead, he takes his eyes elsewhere, focusing on getting the chair over the insane cracks he had created. 

“It was you.” His heart stops for a moment, his hand frozen over the joystick. He stares straight ahead, hoping that if he just doesn’t acknowledge that it won’t happen.   
  


“What was me?” He says it so casually that any bystander wouldn’t even suspect that he had basically just made a public love confession. He kicks himself mentally for even speaking. But he knows he can’t resist it. Any reason to stay close to Finn is good enough for his dumb gay brain. 

“The-” He tapers off, his shock palpable against the almost uncomfortably still air. Poe has every chance to escape, and yet he can’t tear his eyes off of him. 

He looks… _ beautiful _ .

  
Like a god standing on a distant shore of a beach, he’s only ever dreamed about. The golden glow lighting him from the back like he’s floating in front of the sun.

It makes him feel unworthy. Like he’s peering through the bushes at something that clearly isn’t any of his business. Like a lecher gazing through a garden of a King. 

Like a man holding a pair of binoculars.

  
  


Looking at Finn makes his whole body ache, it feels like his heart is so sore that it’ll just stop during one of these beats. But he can’t break himself away. Every inhale floods his senses with some feeling so intoxicating that he wants to gasp in every breath. But the exhale- that’s when it hurts. 

His chest feels stuck like he’s holding his breath for something. Some subconscious prayer that he knows will never be answered. His lungs feel so full that he fears they could burst, and then finally something gives way just as he thinks he can’t hold on any longer. And suddenly he’s repeating the process all over again, stuck in this awful limbo he can’t bear to escape from. 

“The tie-fighter.” Finn turns his furrowed brow in his direction and suddenly the pilot can barely see straight. A distinct bout of adrenaline rolls through his veins, creating a tremble that comes in waves through his chest and down his spine. As if an automatic response, his hand slams into a fist, clenching like a muscle cramp. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He sounds almost cruel. A pang grips his chest like a vice. He knows he’s being cruel, he can feel it. There’s a hurt radiating off of Finn that feels relentless, washing over him in gut-wrenching pulses. 

“On Crait, it was you. It had to be.” Finn combs a hand through his hair as if trying to peel back the fog that obviously covered those memories in his mind. There’s an interesting quirk in the stormtrooper’s lips that draws his attention. His stomach flipping as he tries to keep himself together long enough to avert suspicion. 

“Yeah it had to have been-” Finn is turning to him again and Poe feels like puking. There’s a rock sitting heavy in his stomach that just won’t budge, holding him in place like a paperweight. The light makes an almost angelic glow around the edges of Finn that makes his breath catch. Something hot forms just behind the skin under his eyes and he has to look away just to keep from burning up. 

“The beam, that was you wasn’t it?” If his brow dips any farther down it’ll be touching his nose.    
  


The memory catches him off guard. 

Loud wind hitting his ears so hard he has to grip the handles just to keep from clamping his hands over them. He can still feel the sting of the salt, the way the rocky surface dug into his palm and forearm as he held fast against the tie fighter.    
His tilts his head down, as if closing his eyes will stop that feeling of dread that's coiling in his chest.    
  


Sometimes, when he doesn’t know if he’s going to get out alive, he sees green. 

His ‘ _ no _ ’ is drowned out by Finn scoffing. At first, he assumes that the stormtrooper is angry with him, but when he turns he finds something entirely new. 

Finn is smiling. It’s not angry or hurt. It doesn’t sting the way his smiles always have. His eyes are dark against the golden glow behind him, but they still shine bright enough to make him feel shaky. 

“All this time I thought it was Rey!” He throws his hands up, his smile starting to grow towards a grin. 

Poe can feel sweat dampening his hair now. His hands are completely slick, the gloves barely keeping enough friction to hold fast to them. The crook of his elbow feels sweaty, and he hastily extends his arms out, trying to find some way to avoid drawing attention to how nervous he’s getting. 

He can’t even look at him. 

He can barely keep himself together, he can’t risk making eye contact. Finn had the unfortunate talent to be socially competent when it came to others' emotions. If he looked at him, he would make that face that always made something in Poe’s chest drop. 

He turns away, choosing instead to focus on getting the chair’s controls to unlock from stasis. The space between his eyebrows aches from how hard he’s squinting but he can’t seem to get his face to relax from the scowl he’s set it to. 

“You saved me- you saved us-” Suddenly a loud beeping interrupts him, and they both jump at the noise. Poe rubs his tense leg as Finn fumbles with his communicator for a moment. The beeping stops just as he’s about to answer. 

He hastily slips it back into his pocket but keeps it unbuttoned. He clears his throat against the awkward seconds that have passed and looks back to the pilot. Poe narrowly avoids getting caught staring and diverts his gaze back to Finn’s pocket. 

He can see the fabric lighting up from the other side where the communicator sits, the Co-General obviously having put it on silent. The bright red makes the spot behind his left eye ache starkly against his somewhat clear head. 

He squints just to avoid feeling the beat of his heart against his irises and decides to gaze out to the room beyond the cracked windows.

“Why didn’t you say anything Poe? This is-” He pauses and scoffs, tossing his hands up in some strange mixture of frustration and amazement. 

“This is huge!” 

He feels nauseous. This is so close to praise that he can barely keep the bile from rising towards his throat.

"Well, let's not jump the gun here, Finn" It's unsteady as if he's almost trying to ask him not to, instead of just stating it. 

They really shouldn't jump the gun. His mother had been the Force-user, not him. The force is what had gotten her killed. The same with Leia and Han, and it had almost killed both of his best friends. Wars were fought and entire worlds decimated over this power that he had suddenly found himself stuck with. 

Finn was still grinning, even as his Co-General fought to keep his own stomach bile down. It all just felt so incredibly overwhelming. 

"I'm not jumping anything, Poe you're force-sensitive!" He laughs and the pilot grips at his gloves, trying to center himself. 

Finn runs a hand through his hair again, starting the beginning of what's looking like a long pacing session. 

He stutters over a few sentences before finding his verbal footing once more and spouting into more hysterically-tinged sentences. Poe can feel anxiety dripping slowly down his spine, chilling the blood in his veins down to his fingertips. 

Everything was crashing down around him. Internally and externally. 

A slab of concrete breaks free from its hold on the wall and comes slamming to the ground. 

Poe ignores Finn’s  _ ‘Jesus’ _ , forcing the chair forward so fast that it groans in protest. 

He is nearly past the General when suddenly Poe’s communicator goes off at his hip. 

He grapples with the holster until he has it in an outstretched hand. Lifting the microphone to his lips, he presses the button and waits for the loud confirmation sound. 

“Please contact General Finn if you need anything, I’m handling something on my end.” 

The operator sighs loudly before typing something and mumbling “When are you not ‘handling something’ on your end?” He scoffs and buckles the device back. His arm yelling in protest as he is forced to twist to fit it squarely back in his holster. 

Finn furrows his brows for the 40 billionth time and seems to finally catch Poe’s drift. 

The pilot presses the proverbial gas and moves forward, weaving around the shattered ground with mild resistance. 

The pulse in his temple aches to a beat he can’t quite predict.    
He’s nearly at the doorway now when he hears Finn’s footsteps following him.    
  


“Come on, Poe!” He can hear the Jedi stumble over the broken flooring with a huff of panic. “We need to talk about this!”    
Poe stops, just for a moment. He turns his head to the side he can feel Finn is closest to. 

  
“No, we _don’t_ , Finn.” His stomach feels like it's trying its hardest to make a new spot for itself in his throat.   
Finn tries to reply, but his communicator goes off loudly once more. “You should get that- _General_.”   
And with that, he swings as quickly as he can into the mess hall, his heart slamming against his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter y'all! Trying to get back into writing in my free time and I have newer works I'm trying to get finished but I know this one should be completed first so the next chapter will probably be the last one!   
> I'm thinking it WILL be like a good amount longer though so that's nice!


End file.
